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Applies to: Visual Studio Visual Studio for Mac Visual Studio Code

GitHub Copilot is an AI-powered pair programmer extension for Visual Studio that provides you with context-aware code completions, suggestions, and even entire code snippets. This powerful tool helps developers write code more efficiently, reduce the time spent on repetitive tasks, and minimize errors.

This article was partially created with the help of artificial intelligence. Before publishing, a human author reviewed and revised the content as needed. See Our principles for using AI-generated content in Microsoft Learn .

How GitHub Copilot works

GitHub Copilot works by utilizing advanced machine learning models trained on a vast dataset of publicly available code from GitHub repositories. As you type code, the AI analyzes the context and provides relevant suggestions in real-time. You can receive suggestions also by writing a natural language comment describing what you want the code to do.

You can also use GitHub Copilot to convert comments to code, create unit tests, create SQL queries, and more.

How GitHub Copilot compares to IntelliSense and IntelliCode

Here's a detailed look at what each technology can do for you:

IntelliSense is a code completion feature built-in to Visual Studio, which provides suggestions based on the current context. Such suggestions include variable names, functions, and classes. IntelliSense is language-specific and works with a limited set of programming languages.

IntelliCode is an extension for Visual Studio that uses AI to provide more intelligent whole line completions based on patterns found in your codebase. It goes beyond IntelliSense by analyzing your code to understand common practices and recommend suggestions accordingly.

GitHub Copilot is an AI-powered code completion extension for Visual Studio that leverages a vast dataset of publicly available code to provide context-aware code suggestions, snippets, and even entire functions. It works with many programming languages and offers more advanced assistance compared to IntelliCode and IntelliSense.

While all three aim to improve developer productivity, GitHub Copilot stands out with its ability to understand the context of your code and provide more accurate and relevant suggestions.

Supported programming languages

GitHub Copilot supports several programming languages and frameworks, including but not limited to: C#, C++, and Python.

Requirements

To get started, all you need is Visual Studio 2022 version 17.4.4 or later, and a GitHub Copilot subscription .

GitHub Copilot is free for verified students and for maintainers of popular open source projects on GitHub.

Installation instructions

Open Visual Studio.

On the menu bar, select Extensions > Manage Extensions .

In the Search box, enter "GitHub Copilot".

Select the GitHub Copilot extension, and then select the Download button.

Restart Visual Studio to complete the installation process.

After installation, you can start using GitHub Copilot by typing code in the editor and observing the suggestions provided by AI.

Future features

GitHub Copilot is continuing to evolve; to find out more about the new experience that's coming soon, see the GitHub Copilot chat for Visual Studio 2022 and the IntelliSense list in Visual Studio 2022 can now steer GitHub Copilot code completions blog posts.

Next steps

To learn more about the current GitHub Copilot extension for Visual Studio, consider exploring the following resources:

GitHub Copilot extension: Getting started

GitHub Copilot: Your AI pair programmer